Bill Howell was a house-cleaning compromise for the speakership of the Virginia House of Delegates. He was -- and is -- smart, honest, amiable: just what the doctor ordered after the Vance Wilkins affair (sorry about that pun.)

But he was never caucus chairman. Never the whip. Never the minority leader. Never the majority leader. Never did he speak for the Republicans. He did not have that internal loyalty that develops only over time. Elevating him to the speakership was sorta like skipping over the cardinals and making a bishop in Cleveland the next pope. So he lost his troops when the heat was on? Of course he did. He never had them. He never had them in that heart-grip that makes troops blindly follow commanders into fire.

Delegates and senators have two constituencies that matter: external ones,and internal ones. You and I make up the external constituency. We matter most during election time. In times of governance, when the General Assembly is in session, the constituency that matters most is the internal one, the peer group of other delegates and senators. It doesn't take two to tango. In the House it takes 51; 21 in the Senate.

Let's not overuse this word 'courage,' as in 'maverick' Republicans who showed 'courage.' Courage is facing cancer. Courage is getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of another the day after you've buried a child.

The 17 who broke ranks with the Republican majority in the House no doubt did so with some difficulty. It is hard to defy that internal constituency. But that's why we elect the folks we do: to do their jobs, to make the tough calls, to use their judgment. Gee, didn't we practically have to beat it out of them this time?

Courage? Phttt!

I asked the late, great Albert Lee Philpott once about the difficulties of dealing with the pressures of lobbyists and other so called special interest groups-and there are a lot of lobbyists, a lot of 'interest' groups inside these caucuses. His answer? "Son, if you can't come down here, take their money, drink their liquor, eat their food-and vote against them-then you have no business being here."

(Memo to A. L. We've got a lot of them who have no business being there. Give my best to Moses.)

No, the deal struck this week, finally, is not 'tax reform.' (As of this writing, it isn't even a deal. The Senate won't take it up until two days hence.) Sure, folks are going to tell you otherwise. But that doesn't make it so. Tax reform would match our system of taxation to the realities of our economy. Tax reform? Nothing could be further from the truth. We are in -- and have been for a long time -- a service economy, and yet, still, we do not tax services. After all this gum beating, we're still going to be stuck with a World War I-era system of taxation. True tax reform in Virginia must await another generation of leaders who want to show 'courage.'

No matter what the final outcome is, what we're going to have is largely a redistribution of the burden to the poor, to those who can least afford to pay. The increase in the sales and tobacco tax falls disproportionately to those in the lower income brackets. A proposed two-step, one penny cut in the sales tax on food will counter only some of this.

No, we're not going to have a 'massive' tax increase, not by any measure. Even with it, even if the Senate doubles what the House has done, Virginia will still rank with the Mississippis of the world. Think about it like this: They've gathered up all the faux 'courage,' all the gumption, they could muster and raised something less than a billion dollars in new money to address about $10 billion-worth of new needs. Big deal. How and when are we going to address the other nine?

But let's just say, for the sake of column writing, that you want someone to blame for this historic tax increase. His name is Jim Gilmore. He has no other name. It is Jim Gilmore. How would he plead? "No car tax."

As 150-year dissenters in Virginia government, Republicans know nothing better than 'No.' But they're going to have to come up with something. 'No' is still not a philosophy. It wasn't yesterday. It is not today. It won't be tomorrow.

Will there be the dreaded 'retribution' at the polls? Maybe some, but not much. These guys -- Nordquist, Peterra, Jost, et. al. -- are crackpots. They are the Chicken Littles of the Republican Right. They can't buy elections for themselves-literally, they can't-so they just peep and cheep mightily and hope the sky falls in. But of course it doesn't. And it won't.

Are there winners in any of this? Gov. Mark Warner, by any estimation. When a lot of us were banging on him for trying to out-Republican the Republicans a year ago, he was laying the groundwork. He was managing the $6 billion shortfall, eliminating all those agencies, commissions, and so on, and playing to the capital 'B' business interests of Virginia-for this historic 'revenue enhancement.' Had he not done that, this dust-up would have taken on a typically partisan tone, instead of what it has been: Republicans arguing with Republicans.

Are there losers? Well, let's see. George Allen. Jim Gilmore. Bill Howell, Morgan Griffith. Kate Obehshain Griffin, the Chicken Littles on the Right -- and -- the people of Virginia.

Surely they must feel-as I do-a growing sense of loss these past few weeks, contemplating, wondering just what kind of lame-brains we've entrusted the governance of this commonwealth to.

Consider this for your next gift:
A 60,000 word collection of Barnie Day’s commentaries, entitled "A Mule Yule: Hey, Jesus didn’t ride in on an elephant," with an introduction by Jerry Baliles and forewords by Frosty Landon, Larry Sabato, Robert Holsworth,and Bill Wood, is available from the Democratic Party of Virginia. Contact Laura Bland, toll-free, at 1-800-322-1144